Sensual Humidity
Monday, January 02, 2017
In my Sunday New York Times Woody Allen Reviews a GraphicTale of a Scandalous Starlet. It is a lovely essay of what seems a very good biography on Mary Astor. I was struck by Allen’s deft use of adjectives.
Many years ago when I began to write, prodded with the help of my novelist friend John Lekich who shares Allen's talent for adjectives, I decided I could not go there. And I haven't opting for a direct approach without embellishments.
In the Allen essay which I thoroughly enjoyed I was stopped
by the following:
The truth is I can
think of a dozen other femmes fatales I’d prefer to be lured up a dark alley
with to enjoy a beating or violent death. Even Sorel, who is so smitten with
this movie star that he wants to see her put on a postage stamp, agrees she
never achieved the sensual humidity of Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe. So what
did Mary Astor have that such a good book could be written about her? Well, for
one thing, she had a major scandal — and a torrid one at that. And while she
may not have projected sex appeal, she did reek of aristocracy, or at least her
name, Astor, smacked of the manor. Of course she was in no way related to the
richest man who went down on the Titanic. Astor wasn’t her real name. She was
born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke, a name that would probably never even fit
on the average movie marquee.
What exactly is “sensual humidity”?
I thought about it all last night (by then January 2,
2017). I was stumped until I remembered my bathtub shot of Gillian McGinnis. I
wrote about her here.
I have to admit I have never ever been to a Turkish bath
but when I was taking photographs of McGinnis with my tripod over her and I was
looking down, while my lens did not fog up I felt some stirrings that are still
in my memory.
